19 Team Building Games: Ideas.
At our team, we find many reasons to make time for team building. Sometimes it’s simply to welcome someone new and encourage the team to make them feel included.
Other times, there’s something to celebrate, or we just want to relax and get to know each other better. All these reasons are why we used to spend 20 minutes just looking for a team-building activity so we could enjoy something together. While 20 minutes may not seem like much, it was significant when we only had half an hour for the meeting. It meant we spent almost half our time deciding on something to do! So, we decided to share our list of favorite team-building activities with you.
Let’s start with some great options for when someone new joins, or team members aren’t well-acquainted yet.
1. “Would You Rather” Game
It’s simple: ask questions like, “Would you rather live without music or without movies for the rest of your life?” or “Would you rather have free tickets to every concert or every sporting event for life?” Each team member chooses an option and explains why.
2. True or False?
Each team member shares three facts about themselves, with one being false. The others try to figure out which statement is false, but instead of asking directly, they have to get to know the person better to make their guess.
3. Guess Who?
In this team version of “Guess Who?”, use photos of team members. Each player tries to guess the identity of the team member their opponent has secretly chosen by asking questions about appearance, roles, or light-hearted personal traits.
Gameplay:
- Players take turns asking yes-or-no questions, like “Does this person wear glasses?” or “Does this person work in marketing?”
- Based on the answers, players eliminate photos until only one remains.
Optional Twist: Add questions related to hobbies, favorite snacks, or memorable team moments for extra fun!
4. Coffee Chats
Meet in person or online and bring a card deck of random questions to avoid typical small talk. If you don’t have a deck, try asking these questions:
- What’s something you’re currently grateful for?
- What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve done, or the strangest thing that’s happened to you?
- What’s something that makes you lose track of time?
- What’s one thing you want to achieve in your lifetime?
5. Finding the Author or the Book
Each person thinks of a title for the book of their life. The facilitator compiles these “titles,” and the team guesses who each title belongs to. The person who matches the most titles to authors wins!
6. Who Did What?
Everyone writes down something unique about themselves that others may not know. The facilitator creates a list, and team members guess who did what without directly asking. For example, if someone wrote, “I once encountered a bear while hiking,” others might ask, “Do you go hiking often?”
7. More in Common
This game highlights shared experiences. If you’re meeting in person, form a circle. When a statement resonates, participants step into the circle momentarily, then step back. Remotely, everyone turns on their camera for a few seconds when a statement applies to them.
8. Personal Cheerleader
Each person shares a personal goal they’d like to achieve, and others volunteer to “cheer” them on. This creates a support network where two people cheer each other on toward their respective goals.
9. Traditional Icebreakers
Ask a set of questions everyone can answer to break the ice.
10. The Zoo
In this metaphorical game, the team imagines their workplace as a zoo and each team member as an animal. Each person shares which “zoo role” they’d have and how it aligns with their real role.
Find this tool at Nova.
11. Cannibal Escape Game
Imagine you’re stranded on an island with a group and captured by cannibals who will eat one person daily until a plane arrives on day three. The team decides who to “sacrifice” next and plans a group escape. Each person is assigned a role (e.g., someone who can open the cage), and everyone discusses how to escape before the third day.
This game encourages creativity and helps teammates become more comfortable sharing ideas and discussing strategies in a lighthearted, hypothetical scenario.
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12. Typical Team Retro
It’s always a good idea to have a team retro as part of a team-building activity. It helps team members open up about what could be improved, what should stop, and what should start. It’s a way to discuss and acknowledge that nothing is perfect, but great teams continually look for ways to get better. Make sure the discussion doesn’t just identify areas for improvement but also results in at least one item that will be implemented and tested over the next 60 days.
13. Gratitude Jar
Use a whiteboard to draw a jar and invite people to add notes to the gratitude jar. These notes can express gratitude toward a teammate, something about the way work is done, or the workplace as a whole.
14. Choose a Challenge
Present the team with a challenge — something related to the business, product, or an area needing improvement. Then, divide into three groups, each representing one of Walt Disney’s “three rooms.” Each group has a role: one is the “idea” room, another the “critic” room, and the third focuses on “action.” The idea room always starts, and the action room always finishes the conversation. Groups take turns, requesting their turn to speak as the conversation progresses.
15. Dixit
Dixit is a board game that also works well as a team-building activity, with a free online version available. Here’s how to play:
- One player, the storyteller, chooses a card from their hand and creates a sentence based on that card’s image, saying it aloud without showing the card.
- Each other player selects a card from their hand that best matches the sentence and gives it to the storyteller without revealing it to others.
- The storyteller shuffles all the selected cards and places them face up.
- Each player, other than the storyteller, secretly guesses which card belongs to the storyteller.
Scoring
- If nobody or everybody guesses the correct card, the storyteller scores 0 points, and each other player scores 2 points.
- Otherwise, the storyteller and each player who guessed correctly score 3 points.
- Additionally, non-storyteller players score 1 point for every vote received by their card.
16. Make Me a Pizza
The team is divided into two groups: chefs and hungry, picky customers waiting for their perfect pizza. The chefs have to guess what the customers’ ideal pizza looks like without asking any questions — it’s purely a guess based on what they know about each customer. The chefs have 2–5 minutes to create the “perfect pizza.”
When they serve it, if the customer doesn’t want it (because it’s not their favorite flavor), they pass it to someone else who hasn’t received a pizza yet. If that person also doesn’t want it, the kitchen takes it back. Based on these insights, the chef can try to make another pizza. If a chef guesses correctly, they can help others. Each chef has up to three chances to guess correctly.
It’s just a fun game. At the end, laugh and share your favorite pizza flavors!
Tip: Make sure the team checks that the kitchen has all the ingredients needed to make their favorite pizza.
17. Online Pictionary
A multiplayer guessing and drawing game. https://skribbl.io/
18. Infiltrator: Lovers or Haters
Ask your team questions like, “Do you love dancing so much that you dance at least once a week?” “Are you a fan or a hater of ketchup?” “Do you love drinking coffee without milk?”
Use a survey with options: “Lover,” “Hater,” or “Indifferent.”
You can find this one at Nova.
Then, create groups, such as “Those who love dancing at least once a week” and “Those who love coffee without milk.” Next, choose one person from the “Haters” and secretly place them in the “Lovers” group without the group’s knowledge. Each group’s task is to find the infiltrator.
Tip: Do not include people who feel indifferent; only include those who feel strongly as lovers or haters.
19. In the News
“In the News” is a creative exercise used in marketing and to bring the team together for creative thinking. The idea is to look at the company’s roadmap or upcoming plans for the next six months and imagine what would be featured in the news. The team can choose to talk about anything — team achievements, a product launch, overall changes, or improvements. The key is that it needs to be newsworthy: catchy, attention-grabbing, and interesting enough for people to read.
Form teams of 4 to 6 people, then select 3–4 judges to score each presentation. Each team receives a score from 1 to 10, where 10 represents front-page quality, and 5 would make it to one of the last pages, with only a few sentences and no pictures.
At the end, discuss the following:
- Which news item do you think we could realistically share?
- What do we need to improve to achieve that?
- What seems too far from reality?
- Which of the news items align best with our goals and should be our focus?
- What can we take away from this exercise?
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